Marble Hornets – A YouTube Drama to Rival the Louise Paxton Mystery

A friend recently tipped me off to a series of videos posted on YouTube under the title Marble Hornets. Marble Hornets is a form of internet vérité horror similar in style and perhaps inspired by the Louise Paxton videos. The plot is not easy to explain but here goes: our main protagonist is Jay who begins this story somewhere in the middle of events explaining to the viewer how he volunteered on a student film, titled ‘Marble Hornets’, directed by his friend Alex Kralie, and how Alex began to behave very oddly during the production– abruptly abandoning the project and disappearing off the scene. Jay slowly goes through the footage of the film, trying to piece together what was happening to Alex, and by extension he begins to experience the same frightening journey himself. What follows is a gripping and suspenseful examination of the supernatural, the metaphysical and of human paranoia, and by telling the story through short episodic YouTube videos, Marble Hornets is part of a new form of internet horror genre. Here is the link to Marble Hornets Youtube page where you can view all of the videos released thus far.

Marble Hornets is not quite as good as the Louise Paxton hoax, it is a tad too pretentious for a start. The Louise Paxton videos benefitted from a certain simplicity in the storyline and a stunning central performance from Zoe Richards. But Marble Hornets is a sprawling ambitious horror saga (with more videos still to come), lovingly made with real creativity and imagination. To appreciate Marble Hornets to its fullest extent I would recommend watching two or three videos at a time over the course of several days. Once you have familiarised yourself with the story, these links might prove helpful: a wiki page with lots of information and theories on the story, and the YouTube page of the mysterious Totheark.